From the outside, Constantine Theoharis was the picture of success. He had the fancy job, the home, and the good looks. Beneath the surface, though, his life was on the brink of chaos and collapse. When Constantine’s family didn’t hear from him for a few days, it immediately raised some red flags. They contacted the police, and with some digging, they began to realize there was a lot more to his abrupt silence than anyone suspected.
Constantine and his girlfriend Stacy Avera had been together for years, and with the encouragement of friends and family, the two lovebirds finally decided to make it official. The groom nervously stood up at the altar in front of rows of smiling faces to marry Stacy in south Florida. They were both eager to begin this new chapter in their lives.
His job as a commercial real estate agent meant they had a beautiful home, the sounds of the waves and sandy beaches just steps from their back door. Soon, Stacy and Constantine added a few kids to the mix. Managing the changes in their relationship wasn’t easy.
Adjusting to married life with kids was a challenge, but it worked, for a while at least. As each anniversary passed, maintaining the magic of their relationship grew more difficult. Constantine and Stacy were no longer on the same page.
Nine years in, their differences were too much to work through. Constantine was struggling with substance abuse problems and it put an incredible strain on the marriage. Stacy had given it as many chances as she could before reaching her final limit.
They decided the best solution was to separate. Too much between them had changed for a reconciliation. They signed the divorce papers three days before the marking of their 9th anniversary, citing their split was “in consequence of disputes and irreconcilable differences.”
A judge awarded Stacy full custody of their kids. Constantine received visitation every other weekend and for the kids’ summer vacation. Court dismissed, and Constantine went home to a large house, that for the first time in years, would be frequently empty.
Despite his newfound bachelorhood, Constantine still had to maintain sobriety. Part of the custody agreement involved court-ordered random drug testing, four times per year, until 2010. If he fell off the wagon, his visitation with his children would be revoked. He stuck with it.
But in August of 2014 the seamless co-parenting routine cracked. Stacy grew frustrated with Constantine’s priorities, spending huge amounts on keeping up appearances while neglecting what was the most important.
That month marked Constantine’s first late child support payment. Month after month, his payments grew later, and eventually, his checks stopped arriving at all. Naturally, Stacy wasn’t going to put up with her ex-husband’s not holding up his end of their divorce agreement.
Skipping out on child support payments had serious consequences. Constantine maintained a close bond with his family and expressed how deeply worried he was about not being able to catch up on the payments, and the looming consequences hanging over his head.
Fielding frantic calls from Constantine was a regular practice in the family and then suddenly all communication stopped. So, with his cousin’s words ringing in his ears, Chris Damian called the police to report Constantine missing on March 23rd, 2018.
Police made a welfare check at Constantine’s house. When they opened the door, they expected to see him turn around a corner, demanding an explanation for the cops roaming his house. Instead, everything looked perfectly normal, save for one glaring detail.
Constantine wasn’t there, but his phone, wallet, and keys were out in plain view. If he’d premeditated his flight, he’d have at least packed a bag. None of the essentials were out of place. Then they entered the garage.
An avid paddleboarder, Constantine rarely missed a chance to take in the sunrise from out on the ocean waves. The police noted the paddleboard was gone, and that wasn’t all. His diving bag was emptied of its normal contents: fins, a mask, and a weighted belt.
The police filed an official report declaring Constantine missing. They scoured the surrounding areas for surveillance cameras, hoping to pinpoint when exactly he disappeared. In the well-to-do neighborhood, security cameras were a dime a dozen, so they were bound to get lucky.
They did. At 6:30 am on March 20th, Constantine was captured on camera carrying his paddle board and gear out into the shallows of the ocean. Nothing appeared wrong. He moved out of frame, and no one saw a trace of him again.
Immediately they began widespread searches of the nearby waters. Days passed, but the search for Constantine was coming up dry. Given his prowess at the sport, his family really doubted he could have suffered an accident. There were murmurs that the disappearance could be purposeful.
See, it looked like this case had a tragic, but logical ending: a man paddled out into the ocean, he drowned, and he was never heard from again. However, the police soon learned of another factor that wrenched a big hole in this theory.
The very afternoon of the day Constantine vanished, he was supposed to appear in court. It was the day he’d long agonized over; a judge was going to make a decision regarding his past-due child support, and he owed a huge amount of money.
Over $549,000, in fact. Stacy refused to back down, claiming that her ex husband’s lucrative job and indulgent lifestyle proved he was capable of making payments. He just refused to do so. On the day he went missing, Constantine was expected to leave the courtroom in handcuffs.
“He’s very capable on the paddle board so it seems pretty fishy to me,” Constantine’s younger brother Richard noted to the press. The family suggested that he’d somehow plotted an escape and was actually alive, just staging his disappearance to avoid jail.
His family hoped their appeals on the news would reach Constantine, wherever he was. “If he’s scared, we hope he will contact us. Make a phone call. Just let somebody know you’re safe so we can rest at night.” “Right now, I’m like 50-50, either he fled or he’s out there drowned, I don’t know,” one family member said. The family would rather have Constantine back, alive, even if he went straight to jail.
The news broadcasts aired, and there was still no sign of Constantine. Without a body, or even a trace of his paddle board, the police couldn’t draw a conclusion on this case. Was he the victim of a tragic accident? Or was he just lost at sea for good? Unfortunately this isn’t the first time such a question was asked, as the sea has been both a source of life and the final frontier for as long as humans have been on this planet.